James Gray wrote: > Try adding the -KU switch to Ruby, to put it in UTF-8 mode. Thank you for your really fast answer. I tried this: $ ruby -KU -e "require 'iconv'; puts Iconv.conv('US-ASCII//TRANSLIT','UTF-8','éèêë')" ???? $ ruby -e "\$KCODE='u'; require 'iconv'; puts Iconv.conv('US-ASCII//TRANSLIT','UTF-8','éèêë')" ???? and for information, I have also also: $ echo 'éèêë' | iconv -t ASCII//TRANSLIT -f UTF-8 eeee $ iconv --version iconv (GNU libc) 2.7 irb(main):002:0> 'é'.each_byte {|x| puts x} 195 169 => "\303\251" $ ruby -e "'é'.each_byte {|x| puts x}" 195 169 and finally, the most weird, irb doesn't work if I use pipe: $ echo "require 'iconv'; puts Iconv.conv('US-ASCII//TRANSLIT','UTF-8','é'); 'é'.each_byte{|x| puts x}" | irb require 'iconv'; puts Iconv.conv('US-ASCII//TRANSLIT','UTF-8','é'); 'é'.each_byte{|x| puts x} ? 195 169 "\303\251" -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.